Again from the fields down below in the mist there came the angry cry of a jay, followed by the sharp yelping bark of a fox!

Then those two rabbits lost their heads completely.  They did the most foolish thing that they could have done.  They rushed into their short new tunnel, and hid themselves at the top end of it, under Mr. Tod’s kitchen floor.

Mr. Tod was coming up Bull Banks, and he was in the very worst of tempers.  First he had been upset by breaking the plate.  It was his own fault; but it was a china plate, the last of the dinner service that had belonged to his grandmother, old Vixen Tod.  Then the midges had been very bad.  And he had failed to catch a hen pheasant on her nest; and it had contained only five eggs, two of them addled.  Mr. Tod had had an unsatisfactory night.

As usual, when out of humor, he determined to move house.  First he tried the pollard willow, but it was damp; and the otters had left a dead fish near it.  Mr. Tod likes nobody’s leavings but his own.

He made his way up the hill; his temper was not improved by noticing unmistakable marks of badger.  No one else grubs up the moss so wantonly as Tommy Brock.

Mr. Tod slapped his stick upon the earth and fumed; he guessed where Tommy Brock had gone to.  He was further annoyed by the jay bird which followed him persistently.  It flew from tree to tree and scolded, warning every rabbit within hearing that either a cat or a fox was coming up the plantation.  Once when it flew screaming over his head Mr. Tod snapped at it, and barked.

He approached his house very carefully, with a large rusty key.  He sniffed and his whiskers bristled.

The house was locked up, but Mr. Tod had his doubts whether it was empty.  He turned the rusty key in the lock; the rabbits below could hear it.  Mr. Tod opened the door cautiously and went in.

The sight that met Mr. Tod’s eyes in Mr. Tod’s kitchen made Mr. Tod furious.  There was Mr. Tod’s chair, and Mr. Tod’s pie dish, and his knife and fork and mustard and salt cellar, and his tablecloth, that he had left folded up in the dresser —­all set out for supper (or breakfast) —­without doubt for that odious Tommy Brock.

There was a smell of fresh earth and dirty badger, which fortunately overpowered all smell of rabbit.

But what absorbed Mr. Tod’s attention was a noise, a deep slow regular snoring grunting noise, coming from his own bed.

He peeped through the hinges of the half-open bedroom door.  Then he turned and came out of the house in a hurry.  His whiskers bristled and his coat collar stood on end with rage.

For the next twenty minutes Mr. Tod kept creeping cautiously into the house, and retreating hurriedly out again.  By degrees he ventured further in—­right into the bed-room.  When he was outside the house, he scratched up the earth with fury.  But when he was inside —­he did not like the look of Tommy Brock’s teeth.